referred, has asserted its supremacy, and the boundaries of those States differ little now from those which obtained three thousand years ago.  Rome flew her conquering eagles over the then known world, and has now subsided into the little territory on which her great city was originally built.  The Alps and the Pyrenees have been unable to restrain imperial France; but her expansion was a leverish action; her advance and her retreat were tracked with blood, and those mountain ridges are the re-established limits of her empire.  Shall the Rocky Mountains prove a dividing barrier to us?  Were ours a central consolidated government, instead of a Union of sovereign States, our fate might be learned from the history of other nations.  Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of our forefathers, this is not our case.  Each State having sole charge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem which to others has been insoluble, to us is made easy.  Rapid, safe, and easy communication and co-operation among all parts of our continent-wide republic.  The network of railroads which bind the North and the South, the slope of the Atlantic and the valley of the Mississippi, together testify that our people have the power to perform, in that regard, whatever it is their will to do.

We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses; the time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three; it may be more.  Because of the desert character of the interior country the work will be difficult and expensive.  It will require the efforts of an united people.  The bickerings of little politicians, the jealousies of sections, must give way to dignity of purpose and zeal for the common good.  If the object be obstructed by contention and division as to whether the route to be selected shall be northern, southern or central, the handwriting is on the wall, and it requires little skill to see that failure is the interpretation of the inscription.  You are a practical people and may ask, how is that contest to be avoided?  By taking the question out of the hands of politicians altogether.  Let the Government give such aid as it is proper for it to render to the Company which shall propose the most feasible and advantageous plan; then leave to capitalists with judgment sharpened by interest, the selection of the route, and the difficulties will diminish as did those which you overcame when you connected your harbor with the Canadian Provinces.

It would be to trespass on your kindness and to violate the proprieties of the occasion, were I to detain the vast concourse which stands before me, by entering on the discussion of controverted topics, or by further indulging in the expression of such reflections as circumstances suggest.